KL Gender Aff Dartmouth 2K10 1
Gender Aff
Gender Aff 1
1AC 2
AT: Politics 27
AT: North Korea invasion 30
1AC
Contention one: Inherency
Sex-slave trade crackdown not effective- Laws are being circumvented
Maclean’s February 22, 2010 “South Korea takes on prostitution,” accessed July 18, 2010, lexis
In 2004, the South Korean government enacted new laws designed to crack down on the country's sex trade, which by some estimates accounted for a whopping 4.1 per cent of GDP. To some extent, those regulations were successful: according to the Korean Women's Development Institute, a think tank dedicated to researching women's issues in South Korea, the sex trade now generates approximately 1.6 per cent of GDP, or about $14 billion annually (by comparison, South Korea's agriculture industry accounts for roughly three per cent of GDP). But Sealing Cheng, an anthropologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who specializes in sexuality, prostitution and human rights in South Korea, argues the government's efforts don't always work as intended. While the sex trade laws target pimps and brothel owners, and offer financial and vocational assistance for victims of prostitution, they also establish fines and jail terms for the approximately 269,000 sex workers in the country. "It makes life difficult for a lot of women who, for some reason, remain in the trade. If there isn't adequate assistance for them, they won't leave." The crackdown is also forcing prostitution further underground. When illicit massage parlours are raided, they often reopen as "hostess bars," where women are paid for their company but don't specifically have to sleep with clients, although they often do. "They're moving too quickly for the government to shut them down," says Whasoon Byun, a researcher with the Korean Women's Development Institute.
Cheng says the sex trade remains such a big problem largely because the government incorrectly believes it can stop prostitution by force, and that little will change until women are no longer treated as second-class citizens. "Even with a university degree it's very hard [for women] to find a job."
Eliminating troops key-Troop presence will empirically continue exploitation
Brian parsons, J.D. Candidate, Northwestern University School of Law; B.A. in Communication , 5/06, “Significant steps or empty rhetoric? Current efforts by the United States to Combat Sexual Trafficking near Military bases”, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v4/n3/5/?title=Significant+Steps+or+Empty+Rhetoric%3F+Current+Efforts+by+the+United+States%0D%0Ato+Combat+Sexual+Trafficking+near+Military+Bases&author=Brian+Parsons&pagination=&startpage=&endpage=&issueTitle=&issueDate=May+2006&vol=4&n=3&jTitle=Northwestern+University+Journal+of+International+Human+Rights&cite
In essence, sex trafficking near military bases boils down to a supply and demand issue. While initiatives such as the United Nations Protocol on Trafficking in Persons and the Trafficking Victims Prevention Act9 may be useful in persuading countries to combat trafficking within their own borders, the host country alone has the power to influence the supply of trafficked women available near military bases. But no matter how hard a country attempts to limit the influx of trafficked women into their country, as long as U.S. military bases are creating a strong demand for prostitution and trafficked women, organized crime will find a way to meet that demand. This is not a unique problem of the United States and its military. As long as there have been armies and wars, there have been prostitutes near military bases to service the sexual demands of soldiers.10 But, while the United States pledges to combat trafficking worldwide, these actions threaten the credibility of the United States and help to fund organized crime.11
Thus the plan: The United States federal government should remove its military and police presence in (or from)South Korea.
Advantage One: Prostitution
South Korea is a hot spot for prostitution. People from many countries are coerced into prostitution at camptowns.
Korea Times, June 17, 2010, “Human trafficking severe in Korea :US,” lexis
But the Korean government's efforts and the actual state of affairs are completely at odds. In its initial words, the TIP Report on South Korea revealed that South Korea 'is a source, transit, and destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor, and women and girls in forced commercial sexual exploitation. 'The report also said that men and women from Southeast Asian countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Morocco, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia are forced into prostitution or mandatory labor when they come to Korea for jobs. The TIP report especially criticized Korea for allowing women from countries such as Russia and Uzbekistan who enter Korea via entertainment visas, including those 'recruited to be singers and bar workers near U.S. military facilities,' to be trafficked for forced prostitution.
US endorsement of illegal prostitution in South Korea furthers the exploitation of women
Katharine Moon, Department of Political Science and. Edith Stix Wasserman Chair of Asian Studies Wellesley College, march-april 1999, “South Korean Movements against Militarized Sexual Labor”, Asian Survey volume 39 no. 2
Furthermore, kijich'on women have not been as mobile or "free" as people commonly have assumed. They are beholden to their club owner/manager/ pimp through what human rights activists call the debt bondage system, whereby they accrue debts to their clubs and must work to pay them off before they can leave. The system is premised on exploitation because club owners will often rent a room and purchase furniture, clothing, cosmetics, and music systems-all deemed necessary for the woman to attract GIs- before the new woman even arrives at his/her club but charge her with the debt at usurious rates. Illegal job placement agencies also charge women with a "referral fee" for putting her into a new bar and will expect her to pay.14 In most cases, the women do not have the funds and will borrow from the new employer, who will in turn raise her debts. If a woman tries to leave the club without having paid the debt, the manager/owner will send out thugs, stickyy boys,"15 to bring her back. In 1988, Mal Magazine reported that on the average, the sex workers' club debts ranged between one and four million won ($1,462 and $5,847, respectively, based on 1988 rates).16
US military presence in the US puts forces in a dominant position over sex workers
John Lie, Assistant Professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, june 1995, “The transformation of sexual work in 20-th century korea, gender and society volume 9, no 3, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/190058.pdf
The Japanese defeat in the Second World War ushered in a period of political turmoil. The superpower conflict divided Korea into the Soviet-backed North and the U.S.-supported South. The Korean War (1950-53) confirmed the United States' influence over South Korea; after the war, Korea was a poor agrarian nation dependent on U.S. aid. The traditional ruling, yangban, class largely lost its basis of power after the sweeping land reforms of the early 1950s. In this context, the most powerful group was the U.S. occupation force. The demise of one colonial power brought in another external power.
The U.S. dominance in Northeast Asian geopolitics ensured the privileged position of American soldiers (virtually all men in 1945) in the domestic sexual economy of South Korea. International political economy, in other words, played a major role in shaping domestic gender relations and sexual work. Under U.S. dominance, the primary organization of sexual work catered to American soldiers stationed in Korea. In the colonial period, Korean women served Japanese colonizers; in the postwar period, they entertained American GIs. The comfort divisions disbanded after the war, but prostitutions survived in a different guise to serve U.S. soldiers. The liberation of Korea did not liberate kisaeng or wianbu.
The thousands of women trafficked from overseas are coerced into prostitution as a result not only of their gender but also of their race.
Third World Network, Kanaga Raja, 9/02 “Women former Philippines and former USSR trafficked into south korea
Over 5,000 women, mainly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union, have been trafficked into South Korea for the sex industry since the mid-1990s, with the largest employers of Filipino women being bars located near US military bases, according to new research published by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
The IOM's research report, titled 'A Review of Data on Trafficking in the Republic of Korea', reveals that increasing numbers of trafficked women are entering South Korea since that country's economic recovery in 1999 to service a growing sex industry.
According to the report, authored by Dr June Lee, a former IOM Seoul Chief of Mission, the largest employers of Filipino women are bars located near US military bases. These women are recruited by the traffickers for their proficiency in the English language and are admitted into South Korea on 'E-6 Entertainment' visas. As many as 1,000 Filipino women were estimated to be working in US military bases in 1999.
The report details interviews with trafficked women who describe their recruitment by agents, the false contracts that lured them and the exploitative working conditions that they endure in an industry characterised by entrapment and intimidation.
The report notes that based on official statistics and published reports, up to 5,000 women could have been trafficked into South Korea for the sex industry since the mid-1990s.
However, there is reason to believe that the actual number may in fact be higher. The report highlights that researchers have been hampered in their efforts on what to measure to estimate the true scale of trafficking in South Korea due to the fact that there is not a clear or consistent definition of trafficking in South Korea.
The lack of precise terminology and definitions of trafficking in South Korea remains an ongoing and serious problem. This lack of a unified legal definition of the crime of trafficking makes it unlikely that an adequate analysis of the phenomenon or uniform preventive and punitive policies will be established in the near future, the report notes.
The report finds that women trafficked into the South Korean entertainment industry endure working conditions that clearly exploit them and there is also a present and real threat of violence if any of these women do not perform exactly as instructed. Moreover, other human rights violations are widespread, including illegal confinement, forced labour and even forced prostitution.
Filipino women are especially prone to sexual exploitation as their English language skills make them attractive to American service men interested in purchasing sex. However, women of other nationalities are also sexually exploited since foreign workers are often easier to intimidate than local Korean women.
In July 2001, the US State Department, in a report on trafficking in persons, classified South Korea as one of 23 countries that did not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, under the terms of the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.
The South Korean government meanwhile charged that the US report negatively portrayed Korea and was not based on adequate review of the country's situation. The Korean government, in rebuttal to the report, among others, pointed to several articles in its criminal law that heavily punished those involved in the sale of human beings for prostitution.
Korean prostitution is the nexus of Racism and Sexism.
Katharine H.S. Moon, Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, 1999 (Gender Camouflage women and the U.S. Military, Francine D’Amico and Laurie Weinstein, http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/KMoon/camouflage.pdf, pg 212)
Racist norms and myths prevalent in American society have also helped induce and even justify sexual abuse of women through military men’s participation in prostitution. I interviewed a U.S. Army chaplain in the spring of 1994 who stated: What the soldiers have read and heard before ever arriving in a foreign country influence prostitution a lot. For example, stories about Korean or Thai women being beautiful subservient – they’re tall tales, glamorized….U.S. men would fall in lust with Korean women. They were property, things, slaves….Racism, sexism – it’s all there. The men don’t see the women as human beings – they’re disgusting, things to be thrown away….They speak of the women in the diminutive. One Navy man I interviewed in the spring of 1991 commented that some officers would tell their men that prostitution is part of Asian culture and that Asians like prostitution.
US military life supports hiring prostitutes and degrading women—and prostitution is not a choice. Those who refuse to participate are raped.
International Feminist Journal of Politics, volume 6, number 3, 2004, “A feminist exploration of military conscription: The gendering of the connection between nationalism, militarism, and citizenship in South Korea”, http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/147045_731197592_713767489.pdf
Yet the close connection between being a real man and conscription is also related to class distinction. One reporter mentioned that among powerless people it is seen as very hard to keep a social life without finishing national defense duty. In other words, the exempted man has to overcome public suspicion about his able-bodiedness, masculinity, and social ability (Joongang 20 August 1997). However, this phenomenon varies with class. Among the élite, exemption has nothing to do with future welfare because their power can overwhelm any possible disadvantages. Another more hidden aspect of conscription’s construction of masculinity is the connection between military service and specific modes of masculine sexuality. Prostitution exists as an undeniable accessory of military lives, which enables conscripted soldiers to build gendered concepts that easily define women as subordinate and as a commodity. Seongsuk Jo describes how newly conscripted soldiers are forced to recount exaggerated and even violent sexual experiences to their superiors, and learn quickly that the commercialization of women’s bodies and the normalization of sex with prostitutes are part of the ‘natural’ culture of conscripted men (Jo 1997). Pilhwa Chang and Hyong Cho (1991) analyze how this sexual culture uses sex as a disciplinary tool, homogenizing individual conscripts from diverse backgrounds and transforming them into soldiers who will obey orders in the army. Yet the consequences spill outside the boundaries of the military itself. As a former student activist put it: ‘My wife said that I really changed after military service. According to her, I became wicked and did not have much innocence. In fact, I learned for the first time in the army how to see women as a sexual plaything and commodity and was surprised that it is common sense in our society’ (Jubeom Yi 1994). Nevertheless, the connection between militarized masculinity and the sexual exploitation of women is not self-evident. Awareness of the possible connection between sexual culture and conscription was very low among my student activist interviewees. When asked for reasons for the high frequency of sexual violence, which has been claimed to be the highest in the world, most of those activists I interviewed failed to suggest conscription as a possible reason, despite the fact that they were aware of the high frequency of sexual violence. Interviewees did not link sexual violence to the three years of common group experience during conscription time, which is the experience of most adult men in South Korea. After interviewees’ own analyses of the high frequency of sexual violence against women, I asked: ‘Have you ever thought men’s three years of group experience in the military can be related to the unusual high frequency of sexual violence?’ Sangin Kim’s response was typical: Well, I never thought of it in that way. But it seems like they are very related. Visiting 588 [ a famous prostitution area located near Cheongnyangli Train Station in Seoul] or Yeongdeungpo [ another prostitution area near Yeongdeungpo train station in Seoul] has been men’s custom before joining the army or on vacation in the army. It seems like the connection is quite close. (9 September 1998, Seoul) Kyeongsuk Yi answered: Yes. It seems like they are related. It has been a custom to buy women [prostitutes] for friends who are joining the army, after getting totally drunk. Brothels are always near soldiers. Even all of the waitresses in tearooms sell their bodies. Men are so used to buying sex. If it were not possible, they would rape. There is no circumstantial pressure to feel guilty if men rape women. (31 August 1998, Seoul)